Street SpiritJ U S T I C E N E W S & H O M E L E S S B L U E S I N T H E B A Y A R E A

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by Amber Whitson

When we lived on theAlbany Bulb, we all hadproblems. All people haveproblems, no matter where

they live. Some people have problems thatare more serious in nature than others.

Some of the most serious problems inthis world include: hunger, violence,poverty and a lack of a place where peo-ple can feel confident in their ability tocontinue to call home. These are problemsthat many of us did not have — that is,until the last year and a half that our com-munity existed on the Albany Bulb.

Right up until the moment that each ofus were forcibly evicted from the AlbanyBulb, we had Homes. They were not our“legal” homes. But they were the homeswhere many of us were healthier than wehad ever been at any other time in our lives.

When we lived on the Bulb, we werehappy. Life wasn’t “perfect” for any of us.But that had nothing to do with where wewere living. Nobody’s life is perfect, nomatter where they live. That is life.

Politicians and their “sheeple” pontifi-cated about our “needs.” A need for “casemanagement.” A need for housing. Aneed for “life skills” training. A need forsobriety from whatever we each self-med-icated with. A need to need.

LIFE BEFORE EVICTION

While we lived on the Bulb, we neverfell asleep to the sound of nearby gunfire.

Members of our community who hadalways been at odds with each other werenot forced to dwell in cramped quarters

together, in order to live free from fear ofpolice harassment.

We enjoyed the “luxury” of being ableto afford to buy groceries.

Many of us had more positive interac-tions (far more interactions, in general)

with other members of society. We were in better shape (riding our

bikes to and from town). We were in better health, eating health-

ier food and breathing healthier air, withour minds more at peace.

After the mass eviction of people fromthe Albany Bulb, as a result of the assis-tance we received, some of us werehoused in the poorest areas of Richmond

The Albany Bulb: Home Is Where the Heart Is

by Janny Castillo

“We can’t arrest our way out ofhomelessness.” — Eric Ares, Los AngelesCommunity Action Network

What would make 13 elders from St.Mary’s Center, ages 55 to 90, and aPresentation Sister pile into cars at 8:00a.m. in the morning and drive 80 miles tofoggy Sacramento? Their fierce commit-ment to urge California legislators to sup-port the Right to Rest Act of the WesternRegional Advocacy Project (WRAP).

On February 19, St. Mary’s CenterSenior Advocates for Hope and Justicejoined other advocates, some from as faraway as Los Angeles, to share their per-sonal stories of the consequences of beingcited and arrested for sitting, lying andsleeping. They described how cities use“broken windows” policing to targethomeless people and criminalize theirinnocent, life-sustaining activities.

Due to decades of national and statecuts to affordable housing, chronic home-lessness has plagued California cities.Common sense would demand thataffordable housing is the solution tohomelessness, rather than criminalizingthe very people we want to help.

Report Finds State’s Vagrancy Laws Violate Rights

At the State Capitol, the UC Policy Advocacy Clinic released a report on the rising criminalization of homelesspeople in California by the use of laws that mimic shameful vagrancy laws and discriminatory edicts of past eras.

Photo credit:Janny Castillo

See California’s Vagrancy Laws page 10

“Protest Grid.” Albany Bulb residents carried these signs protesting their eviction to Albany City Hall. Image by Robin Lasser

See Home Is Where the Heart Is page 11

March 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T2

by Terry Messman

It has now been 50 years since “BloodySunday” in Selma, Alabama, whenJohn Lewis and Hosea Williams led

some 600 civil rights marchers across theEdmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.

The demonstrators attempted to peace-fully march from Selma to Montgomeryin support of voting rights, but state andlocal police viciously attacked the nonvio-lent procession, brutally beating themwith whips and clubs, firing tear gas andcharging the defenseless marchers onhorseback. Hundreds of people sufferedbloody beatings and some were clubbednearly to death.

Fifty years have passed and yet Rep.John Lewis remains just as strongly com-mitted to the Freedom Movement’s visionof nonviolent social change, just as dedi-cated to building a world based on its val-ues of love, peace and human rights.

On February 18, 2015, 50 years afterSelma, Lewis spoke to a gathering in SanFrancisco and vividly recalled themoment when the marchers first encoun-tered Alabama state troopers and localpolice on the bridge.

“We got to the highest point on theEdmund Pettus Bridge,” Lewis said, “anddown below we saw a sea of blue —Alabama’s state troopers. And behind thestate troopers we saw the sheriff’s posseon horseback.”

Major John Cloud told the civil rightsmarchers they were conducting an unlaw-ful march, and when Hosea Williamsasked him for a moment to pray, themajor said, “Troopers advance!”

Lewis soberly described what hap-pened next, in the first moments of thepolice attack before he lost consciousness.

“You saw these men putting on theirgas masks,” he said. “They came towardsus, beating us with night sticks, tramplingus with horses and releasing the tear gas. Iwas hit on the head by a state trooper witha night stick. My legs went out fromunder me. I fell to the ground.

THE LAST NONVIOLENT PROTEST

“Apparently, I lost consciousness. Thedoctor said I had a concussion. I thought Iwas going to die on that bridge. I thoughtit was the last nonviolent protest. Butsomehow I survived. And a group of nunstook care of us at a local hospital.”

This police assault on the Selmamarchers is also brought back to life inthe first pages of March: Book One, agraphic novel by John Lewis, co-authorAndrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell thatoffers a highly personal, eyewitnessaccount of the civil rights movement.

When Lewis was a young man, he wasgreatly influenced by a widely distributedcomic book, “Martin Luther King and theMontgomery Story,” a pictorial history ofthe Montgomery bus boycott published bythe Fellowship of Reconciliation.

The comic book influenced Rep. Lewisto work with Congressional Aide AndrewAydin to create a trilogy of graphic novelsabout the Selma marches and the entireFreedom Movement of the 1960s. March:Book One is a #1 New York TimesBestseller and the first graphic novel to

win a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Even though it has been 50 years since

the march on Bloody Sunday, the storyand lessons of Selma have perhaps neverbeen more timely and meaningful. Fifty-year anniversary events are being held inhonor of this turning point in the struggleto win voting rights. The excellent movie,“Selma,” is telling the history of the strug-gle for a new generation. Also, the nation-wide protests of the police killings ofMichael Brown and Eric Garner are areminder that social-change movementsare needed more than ever.

Rep. Lewis spoke about his experi-ences in the civil rights movement at theSan Francisco Public Library on February18, just three days before his 75th birth-day. Lewis was a 25-year-old firebrandactivist when he delivered his brilliant,outspoken speech at the massive Marchon Washington for Jobs and Freedom onAugust 28, 1963, a speech that was souncompromising in its militant demandsfor justice and freedom that march orga-nizers pleaded with him to tone it down.

Fifty years later, in his speech in SanFrancisco, the 75-year-old Lewis provedto be an extraordinarily eloquent andinspiring teacher in conveying the lifelonglessons in nonviolence he learned duringNashville sit-ins, Freedom Rides inAlabama, Mississippi Freedom Summer,and during the Selma marches.

But Lewis is much greater — muchdeeper — than merely a skilled orator. Hespeaks in a modest, somewhat unassum-ing way, without overly dramatic flourish-es, yet he connects with people at a veryprofound level, because he speaks fromsome deeply thoughtful place within. Hisstories about nonviolent resistance toracism and oppression land with eye-opening impact.

Both in his public speeches and in thepages of his graphic novels, his story-telling is so vivid and realistic that he isable to make his listeners really feel thelife-and-death stakes of the struggle forfreedom that fell on the shoulders of veryyoung activists in the 1960s.

As a young man, Lewis was often on theradical, cutting edge of nonviolent resis-tance. Today, he is one of the nation’s mostpowerful voices for the values of nonvio-lence, love, peace and justice.

CHILD OF SHARECROPPERS

John Lewis was born on Feb. 21, 1940,on a small farm near the tiny town ofTroy, Alabama. His parents were share-croppers who finally were able to buytheir land and raised hogs, peanuts, cows,cotton, corn — and chickens. In his

speech in San Francisco, Lewis recalledthose days with affection, especially hischildhood years of raising chickens.Lewis was too tenderhearted to cooperatein selling his chickens or letting them bekilled for food, preferring instead topreach to his barnyard congregation ofchickens. I couldn’t help but recall St.Francis preaching to the birds.

As a child, when his family visited thetowns of Montgomery, Tuskegee andBirmingham, Alabama, Lewis noticed thesigns that said, “White Men, ColoredMen, White Women, Colored Women.”

GETTING INTO NECESSARY TROUBLE

At the movie theaters, he said, all thelittle black children would go upstairs tothe balcony and all the little white chil-dren went downstairs to the first floor.

Lewis said, “I would ask my parentsand grandparents, ‘Why?’ They wouldsay, ‘Well, that’s the way it is. Don’t getin the way. Don’t get in trouble.’”

In 1955, when Lewis was 15 and inhigh school, he heard about the arrest ofRosa Parks because she refused to go tothe back of the bus. “The action of RosaParks and the leadership and words of Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired me tofind a way to get in the way, and to getinto trouble,” Lewis said. “And I got intotrouble — necessary trouble!”

Inspired by Dr. King and Rosa Parks,Lewis went to the Pike County Library in1956 when he was 16, and tried to checkout books. “The librarian told us that thelibrary is only for whites and not for col-oreds,” he said.

“I never went back to the Pike CountyPubic Library again until July 5, 1998, fora book signing for my first book, Walkingwith the Wind. Hundreds of black andwhite citizens showed up.”

After a large reception and book sign-

ing, the library gave him a library card —42 long years after the 16-year-old Lewishad been denied. “It says something aboutthe distance we’ve come and the progresswe’ve made in laying down the burden ofrace,” Lewis said.

Lewis himself has come a long wayfrom that small farm in Alabama. He waselected to the House of Representatives inGeorgia’s 5th District in 1986. Today, heis one of the most progressive members ofCongress, speaking out for national healthinsurance, gay rights and measures tofight poverty. He sponsored the Peace TaxFund Bill to give taxpayers a way to con-scientiously object to military taxation,and he opposed NAFTA and the Clintonadministration’s attacks on welfare.

While the college-age Lewis wasattending American Baptist TheologicalSeminary and Fisk University inNashville, students from several collegesbegan attending nonviolence workshopsconducted by Jim Lawson. Lawson “hadlived in India and studied the way ofpeace, the way of love, the way of nonvio-lence,” Lewis said.

Along with strategy sessions and role-playing, Lewis said, “we became imbuedwith the way of peace, with the way oflove, with the way of nonviolence. Manyof us started accepting the way of nonvio-lence as a way of life, a way of living.”

That all sounds very lofty and utopian.Yet, these very young men and womenbegan putting the ideals of love and peaceinto action in a climate of extreme vio-lence and racial intolerance. They had tofind the strength to endure the hatreddirected at their nonviolent protests bythousands of white people who defendedthe system of segregation with acts of bru-tality and bloodshed.

John Lewis and the Spirit of Selma“I thought I was going to dieon that bridge. I thought itwas the last nonviolentprotest. But somehow I sur-vived, and a group of nunstook care of us at a hospital.”

— John Lewis, beaten by Alabama policeon the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

The cover art from March: Book Two shows the burning of the Freedom Riders’ bus by a mob that then assaulted the Riders.

See John Lewis and the Spirit page 7

John Lewis joins a sit-in at a Nashville lunch counter. March: Book One, cover art, detail

March 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 3

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March 2015

by TJ Johnston

Families living in 8-by-10-feetrooms. Drug dealing in the hall-ways. Vermin crawling in therooms. Managers threatening ten-

ants and visitors.Such conditions in the single-room-

occupancy (SRO) hotels that houseupwards of 30,000 people in San Franciscoscarcely make these abodes welcoming.

“Hardly Home: Stories from SanFrancisco’s SROs” is a short documentarydirected by Samantha Lew, a student atthe University of California at Berkeleyand former intern at the Coalition onHomelessness. The film is based onLew’s interviews with SRO residents,which were published in a series of storiesin the Street Sheet last year.

The film has been released online witha report by the SRO Families UnitedCollaborative to follow in March.

Estimates of the SRO hotel populationin San Francisco appear to be fluid. In2009, the city’s Planning Department saidthat 18,500 people dwell in hotels, whilethe Central City SRO Collaborativeplaces the number at more than 30,000.

HOUSING OF LAST RESORT

SROs often provide housing of lastresort for low-income people and are meantto serve as a haven for families, peoplestruggling with addiction and mental healthdiagnoses, domestic violence victims,immigrants and the elderly. That is the pur-pose of these hotels, at least in theory.

The reality is that SRO hotels, whichaverage 30 to 40 rooms per building, areovercrowded, unsanitary and dangerous. InSan Francisco, such hotels are concentratedin the Tenderloin, South of Market,Mission and Chinatown neighborhoods.

Although the city administers somehotels through nonprofit organizations,privately run SROs predominate. In 2009,the last year figures were available, theDepartment of Building Inspection found418 private hotels, in contrast with 87

publicly operated ones.Before filming, Lew, a San Francisco

native studying public health at UCBerkeley, already had heard stories of cou-ples and families living in cramped quar-ters, yet shooting her film in the hotelsthrew a new light on the SRO experience.

“Being in the space itself illustratedjust how difficult it was to live in such aplace,” she said. “I was also surprised bythe variability between each SRO I visit-ed. Some were nicer than others. Somehad very different procedures to enter thebuildings, and others seem like anyonecould come and go.”

“There really is no uniformity betweenSROs, and each seemed to have its ownculture and reputation,” Lew added.

One resident experienced a change inatmosphere from her previous hotel. Nowliving at the Mission Hotel, Cynthia’s lotin life somewhat improved when shemoved from the Civic Center Hotel —with its open-air drug trade and use in thecorridors and lack of separate-genderbathrooms — once the county welfareprogram offered her current room.

Her room at the Mission Hotel isadorned with a map of the world, a streetsign reading “Dead Head Way” and a listof movies she wants to see. On her night-stand are framed certificates from theMission SRO Collaborative and the SanFrancisco Board of Supervisors in recog-nition of her tenant advocacy. Maggie, herChihuahua, lives with her to relieve symp-toms of anxiety, post-traumatic disorderand depression. Occasionally, cockroach-es crawl in her unit, but it hasn’t beeninfested with bedbugs, an all-too-commonplague in SROs.

However, Cynthia notes the lack of a“housing ladder” when the city tries tosecure or create living spaces for poorpeople. “I have no chance to move upwhen they build affordable housing,” shesaid. “They only want to move in home-less people. There should be a step-upprogram for one of those studio apart-ments they’re building, but I can’tbecause I’m not homeless any more.”

‘WORSE THAN PRISON’When Lew visited the Phillips Hotel in

South of Market to interview Andrea, sheand her crew experienced harassment andintimidation from the managers, Ashok and

Ricky Patel, who tried to prevent theirentry. Ricky Patel brandished a ridged,metal rod. Lew had to call the police forassistance while Andrea was forced into analtercation with the Patels. Eventually, theywere allowed to enter Andrea’s room.

Alexander Wong, Lew’s camera opera-tor, noted the dangers tenants experience.“The hazards presented by SROs to thetenants’ mental and physical health arestaggering and immediate,” he said.

The police are called in at least twice aweek, Lew said. “The Patels constantlyharass tenants, physically and psychologi-cally, transforming the Phillips Hotel intowhat several of the tenants described as aprison.”

Psychological experts would even con-sider these tactics as a form of torture:loud noises and construction work at 3 or4 a.m., constant berating with racial slursand creation of health hazards.

Even the Patels’ ownership of thePhillips Hotel is in question. Tenantsaccuse them of fraudulently acquiring thehotel and pocketing rent money. Somehave stopped paying.

Desiree, another Phillips resident whorequested her face not be shown, had tobe prescribed antidepressants. “It’s worsethan prison,” she said. “At least in prison,they don’t treat you so bad.” When shereported the conditions to the city, thePatels retaliated by cranking up the heatand locking the bathrooms.

“He wants to strip you of your pride,your character and dignity,” she said ofRicky. “I told him you can’t have it.”

FAMILIES IN CRAMPED ROOMS

While the “S” in SRO stands for “sin-gle,” families are often housed in 8-by-10or 10-by-12-feet spaces. This is definitelythe case with Jun, a native of Guangzhou,China. He lives with his wife, Winnie, andtheir two children, now ages 10 and 1, inone of the 145 SRO hotels — about one-third the city’s total — that dot Chinatown.

Jun works as a janitor at Self Help forthe Elderly, a community organizationserving the Chinese community, whileWinnie studies hairstyling. SROs act asentry points for newcomers to the country,yet the living arrangements add to the chal-lenges immigrants already face.

“I thought it would be a little bit better[than in China], but I never thought it

would be like this,” he said in Cantonese,noting the lack of amenities in each room.“Living here is a lot different from China.There’s no bathroom. There’s no kitchen.You have to wait in line in order to usethe kitchen.”

His janitor’s wages can barely cover the$760 per month that pay for a 10-by-10-feetroom furnished with a small metal sink, acouple of stovetops, a double bed and abunk bed. For now, moving to a spacewhere Jun’s children would have moreroom to play isn’t an option, certainly whenthe average monthly rent for a two-bed-room in the city is approaching $4,000.

“Coming here, you expect the condi-tions to be better than in China. When yousay the U.S. doesn’t have housing prob-lems, that’s not true.”

********Watch “Hardly Home: Stories From

San Francisco’s SROs,” online athttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PznBYNCdMY0

Street SpiritStreet Spirit is published by AmericanFriends Service Committee. The ven-dor program is run by J.C. Orton.

Editor, Layout: Terry MessmanWeb manager: Jesse ClarkeHuman rights editor: Carol Denney

Contributors: Barbara Boissevain,Janny Castillo, Carol Denney, LydiaGans, Elena Gross, TJ Johnston, LeonKennedy, Robin Lasser, Amy Ma,South Florida Food Not Bombs,Alexander Wang, Amber Whitson

All works copyrighted by the authors.

The views expressed in Street Spirit arti-cles are those of the individual authors,not necessarily those of the AFSC.

Street Spirit welcomes submissions ofarticles, artwork, poems and photos. Contact: Terry MessmanStreet Spirit, 65 Ninth Street,San Francisco, CA 94103E-mail: spirit@afsc.orgWeb: http://www.thestreetspirit.org

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An SRO Hotel Is Hardly a Home in San Francisco

Cynthia and her dog Maggie share an SRO room at the Mission Hotel. Amy Ma photo Andrea lives in a tiny, cramped room in the Phillips Hotel. Alexander Wong photo

Documentary film by UCBstudent exposes degradingconditions and overcrowd-ing in SRO hotels.

March 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T4

by Elena Gross

We’ve all played that gamewhere you ask someone:If your house was sudden-ly destroyed, what is the

one thing you would try to save? Theanswer is often incredibly revealing of thekinds of things — objects, memories, orbeings — the person holds sacred.

But, for many of us, the comfort of thegame is that we have never been forced tomake that decision, or robbed of thechance to do so. The exhibition “Refugein Refuse: Homesteading Art & CultureProject” at SOMArts Cultural Center inSan Francisco, is as much about honoringthe importance and fragility of home, andthe many ways one can come to define it,as it is about showcasing the truly remark-able artwork of local artists and residentsof the Albany Bulb.

“Refuge in Refuse” is one of threeshows this year that comprise SOMArts’Commons Curatorial Residency Program.Bay Area residents, artists, curators andactivists are encouraged to submit propos-als for an exhibition that highlights theBay Area’s “many dimensions of diversi-ty including race, class, cultural heritage,artistic expression, ability, gender identityand sexual orientation.”

The SOMArts Commons CuratorialResidency recipients, Robin Lasser,Danielle Siembieda, and BarbaraBoissevain, have chosen to open the floorfor a population often talked about but farless frequently heard. The former resi-dents of the Albany Bulb, or as many self-identify, The Landfillians, have collabo-rated with Bay Area artists, architects,scholars, and writers to express them-selves and tell their stories with unsenti-mental honesty and integrity.

The exhibit presents a multifocal andcomplicated view of life at the AlbanyBulb before and after the most recentmass-eviction last spring, which was thefirst step in an effort to banish the now-homeless residents and convert the landinto public park space.

Like the social infrastructure of theAlbany Bulb itself, much of the work inthe exhibition is the result of careful col-laboration. Many hands came together tomake this show possible, and many per-spectives are on display at once.

Photographers and documentariansmeet with sculptors and landscape archi-tects; beaded mobiles and paintings doneon salvaged metal meet with 3D render-ings and interventionist park signs.

The delicate ecology of people, plants,animals and artwork that all coexisted onthe Albany Bulb are given equal footingand thoughtful consideration. “Refuge inRefuse” really uncovers what this placehas meant — and still means — to manydifferent people.

Though there is something innatelypolitical about the work in “Refuge inRefuse,” there is also a strong emotivequality, and this was never more visiblethan in witnessing the artists react to see-ing their own work on display, some ofthem for the first time.

“It’s beautiful,” said artist DanielleEvans as she gazed admiringly at her ownpaintings. “It’s like ‘that’s not me!’ But itis!”

Her work is displayed beside Jimbowthe Hobow’s brilliantly titled paintings,such as “Dancing Landfillians,” and metalphoto-collage mandala portraits of resi-dents like Tamara, who performed herown rendition of Elphaba the WickedWitch of the West, melting outside thewindow of Mad Marc’s Castle, a jointcollaboration between Tamara, RobinLasser and sculptor Judith Leinen.

The artworks reveal glimpses into the

lives of these individuals and allow you,for a minute, to see The Landfillians asthey see themselves. Those of us in posi-tions of privilege may come to a showlike “Refuge in Refuse” with precon-ceived notions about what being “home-less” looks like, or what homelessness is,or who homeless people are.

But so rarely do we take a minute to letthose on whom we’ve already passedjudgement — good, bad or otherwise —speak for themselves. “We would workwith the residents out there and talk tothem about their stories. And people likeTamara or Boxer Bob really created theirown lives for the camera,” Lasser said ofher collaboration with residents to makethe film “Refuge in Refuse.”

Though mediums in this exhibitionrange from the collection of found objects(or “nifties” as they are referred to in thepiece by Amber Whitson) to contempo-rary scan technology, the most prolificand varied is perhaps the use of film. Inaddition to the large-scale photographsand zoetrope mandalas, there are threedocumentary films working in conjunc-tion with the exhibition.

On opening night of the exhibition,SOMArts screened all three films back-to-back, including post-film discussions andtalks by the artists. The three films are“Bum’s Paradise,” “Where Do You GoWhen It Rains,” and “Refuge in Refuse,”all collaborative efforts by documentari-ans and Albany Bulb residents. They allplayed on loop in the gallery space duringthe exhibition. All three films are nowavailable and can be viewed at any timeon the Refuge in Refuse website, atwww.refugeinrefuse.weebly.com as wellas on Public Access TV. [See:http://www.somarts.org/refugecommons/]

The films take the viewer on a chrono-logical walkthrough of the strugglebetween Bulb residents and Albany offi-cials from the time of the first mass evic-tions in 1999 to the most recent evictionsin April 2014. These screenings are partic-ularly effective in reminding the audiencethat the lives and struggles of the AlbanyBulb and the people who lived there didnot end when the cameras stopped rolling,and will not end when the exhibition closesat SOMArts in March.

Seeing subjects of the film, likepoet/artist Robert “Rabbit” Barringer orattorney/SNIFF artist Osha Neumann,

stand before the projection screen afterone of the films and address the crowdwas an emotional and powerful experi-ence, drawing many curious, impassionedand heated questions from the audience.

The question that most hung in the air:What happens now? What happens to theresidents? To the artwork? To the Bulb?The artists of “Refuge in Refuse” are liv-ing proof that this struggle is still notover. There are lives still being affectedand no good can come from ignoring that.

At the opening, Andy Kreamer, a for-mer resident of the Bulb and the filmmakerof “Where Do You Go When It Rains,”gave a very moving talk, asking for partici-pants to call out the names of Bulb resi-dents who had been lost. The weight of thisaction filled the room with a kind of realitynot replicable on screen. The amount ofloss that has been suffered in the past year,both physically and mentally, is unquantifi-able. The residents have lost more thantheir homes. They’ve lost their safety, theirfriends, their peace of mind.

For some, their artwork still remains onthe Bulb. However, it hardly feels like avictory. “Now that the people are gone, Ipersonally have no interest in going back— or keeping the art there,” Neumann saidafter the showing of “Bum’s Paradise.”

Though not a resident, Neumann is oneof the artists in the SNIFF collective whoworked on the Bulb and whose artwork isnow a signature part of the landscape.Pieces of his sculptural work, as well asMad Marc’s Castle, are some of the onlysurviving remnants of the artistic commu-nity on the Bulb. The homes and encamp-ments were destroyed in the eviction.

The “Refuge in Refuse” exhibition isnot just about what survived, but also aboutwhat was lost. Probably the most surpris-ing pieces in the show are the 3D pointcloud images of the Bulb, made in October2013 before the mass eviction by artistsDanielle Siembieda and Robin Lasser incollaboration with F3 & Associates, a 3Dprinting firm in Benicia.

“I am a new media artist by trade, sotechnology is an important aspect in how Iwork,” Siembieda said. “The site is veryarchitectural and I knew it would be onlymoments before the buildings were gone.With other important historical land-marks, surveyors document every aspectof a building. Using 3D scan technologyallows [us] to have accurate preservation

of information.” During an upcoming event for “Refuge

in Refuse,” participants will access an“augmented reality tour” on the actual siteof the Albany Bulb, allowing them to seethe structures that existed on the landprior to demolition.

“This was the perfect setting for thistype of work,” Siembieda said. “Thestructures do not adhere to formal angularstructures and are difficult to replicate.With a team of surveyors and the technol-ogy, we were able to access the CaliforniaCoordinates (more precise than GPS coor-dinates) and the exact position each struc-ture had taken.”

The product of this work is striking. Thescans on display as still images of the Bulblook like something out of a very colorfuldream, with mansions and castles and metalsculptures. But like a dream, we are nowleft with harsh reality, fragmented memo-ries and a longing to go back to sleep.

As Lasser said several times during mytalk with her, “This show is not a solu-tion.” Refuge in Refuse is not a solutionto the eviction and displacement of a largenumber of now-homeless human beingswho created a community at the AlbanyBulb that has been demolished.

Greg Kloehn’s beautifully mademobile structures for the homeless, onview in the exhibition, are not a solutionto homelessness. An augmented realitytour and park signs are not a solution tothe erasure of marginalized histories ofthe Bulb. But it is a start.

What this exhibition, and the contribu-tions of all the artists, community organiz-ers and former residents, does offer, is achance to reflect. It offers a chance to seethe Landfillians as they are and as theywant to be seen. And it enables us to seethat a “homeless” or “houseless” or sim-ply more ephemeral way of life is no lessvalid or less worthy of respect.

“Refuge in Refuse” presents theAlbany Bulb in full complexity and livingcolor and is committed to honoring thespace, as it was, as it is and as it will beremembered by those therein invested.

The exhibition is still on view untilMarch 14, 2015, at SOMArts CulturalCenter, 934 Brannan St. San Francisco, CA,94103. Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday, 12-7p.m. and Saturday 12-5 p.m. More info:www.somarts.org/refugeinrefuse.

The Sense of Loss When a Community Is Erased

Andy Kreamer, a former resident of the Albany Bulb, made the film, “Where Do You Go When It Rains?” At the exhibition,he asked people to call out the names of Albany Bulb residents who had been lost. The amount of loss that has been sufferedin the past year, both physically and mentally, is overwhelming. The residents have lost more than their homes. They’ve losttheir safety, their friends, their peace of mind.

March 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 5

A Column on Human Rights by Carol Denney

Food Not Bombs and the SouthernLegal Counsel are asking the U.S.District Court for the Southern

District of Florida to strike down FortLauderdale’s new ordinance criminalizingfood sharing in a lawsuit asking forinjunctive relief and damages.

The ordinance requires “written con-sent” from the City to share food in anypublic park or public sidewalk throughoutFort Lauderdale. It obligates those whoshare food to meet all state, county andcity requirements for food service estab-lishments, including the provision of“restroom facilities, portable toilets orother similar facilities,” among manyother requirements.

To hold their Friday gatherings inStranahan Park, members of Food NotBombs are required by the new ordinanceto obtain a “conditional use permit” by fil-ing an application with the planning andzoning board which is reviewed by adevelopment review committee, followedby a 20-60 day delay until a public hear-ing by the planning and zoning board,which can be reviewed within 30 days bythe City Commission.

This requirement would apply to eachand every location where meals areserved, including one-time temporaryevents. Groups now risk $500 fines and60-day jail sentences unless they complywith these burdensome regulations.

“Usually zoning ordinances deal withdevelopment and private property,” saidKirsten Clanton of the Southern LegalCounsel. “This ordinance doesn’t make anydistinction between public and private prop-erty and tries to regulate public space.”

Clanton notes that separate from theordinance itself is the issue of getting con-sent from the City as a part of park ruleswhich “basically ban food distribution”without providing any mechanism forobtaining city permission. “It doesn’tmake any sense,” Clanton said.

Food Not Bombs’ food sharing is anintrinsic part of its political message, whichstates that society can “end hunger andpoverty if our collective resources are redi-rected from the military and war.” The sim-plicity of Food Not Bombs’ name and mis-sion has taken root worldwide. Its websitelists over 500 chapters, suggesting that it ismore likely that there are “over 1,000 chap-ters of Food Not Bombs active in over 60countries in Europe, the Middle East,Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia andNew Zealand.”

Food Not Bombs considers the sharingof food to be protected political expression,rather than charity, and shares vegan orvegetarian meals as part of the fundamentalmessage of peace, unity, and opposition towar — the same message that is so clearlyexpressed in its name.

Fort Lauderdale argues that Food NotBombs is an “Outdoor Food DistributionCenter” under its newly revised definitionand, as such, food distribution is prohibit-ed without a permit. The new ordinancetook effect October 31, 2014, but has not

stopped weekly demonstrations by FortLauderdale Food Not Bombs despitepolice interference and arrests.

Fort Lauderdale’s ordinance states thatthe provision of food as a social servicehas “serious objectionable characteristics”and that it “may result in adverse sec-ondary effects on adjacent properties.”

In addition, the City of Fort Lauderdaleargues that “providing food on the streetto homeless individuals is perpetuatinghomelessness.” The estimated homelesspopulation in Florida in 2012 was nearly55,000, just behind California and NewYork’s numbers. The willingness of cityofficials to criminalize and arrest thosewho share food with others in publicplaces —including 90-year-old ArnoldAbbott, a World War II veteran — hasreceived widespread media attention.

The City of Fort Lauderdale defendedits ordinance by relaxing the rules onfeeding homeless people indoors in hous-es of worship and on private property, inan effort to steer food distribution awayfrom public parks like Stranahan Park, asmall 1.6 acres in the downtown center.

The media response to Fort Lauderdale’scrackdown has been very negative, accord-ing to Clanton, who says that statewide theefforts to criminalize homelessness are“always a response to the visibility ofhomelessness in public spaces.”

“It’s business interests,” she states.“It’s an effort to sanitize public space,often for tourism and tourist dollars.”

But Stranahan Park’s central locationmakes it “a quintessential public forum,”according to the Southern LegalCounsel’s complaint, a perfect place forFood Not Bombs to illustrate publiclytheir political message through their fooddistribution, their written materials, andthe Food Not Bombs banner with the logoby co-founder Keith McHenry, a purplehand holding a bright orange carrot.

Stranahan Park underwent some physi-cal alterations from 2012 to the present.Ornamental foliage was added to previous-ly grassy areas, and the park now sportsblack metallic fencing with gates lockedduring the hours the park is closed, whichthe complaint states were “part of a con-certed effort by the City to move poor andhomeless people out of the park.”

Clanton says that part of the signifi-cance of Stranahan Park for Food NotBombs is the city’s efforts to crack downon homeless people who use the park.

“Homeless people have been pushedout of that area,” she notes. “One of theideas is reclaiming public space for thehomeless and for political expression.”

Food Not Bombs protests the city’shomeless relocation effort. The complaintstates that “access to public spaces is aright to be shared by all, not a privilege tobe limited by the government to selectedindividuals.”

Fort Lauderdale insists that its approachto homelessness is progressive, including “a230 bed homeless assistance center forshort-term stays,” and a “Housing First pol-icy,” according to the New York Times.

But the ordinance which took effectlast Halloween is giving Fort Lauderdale

an uncomfortable amount of negativepress as another in an effort by manycities nationwide to attempt to pushhomelessness, meal programs and advoca-cy out of sight and out of mind.

Food-sharing is “inherently symbolicexpression and conduct,” states the com-plaint. “Sharing food with another personcommunicates messages of intimacy,affirms social ties, and communicatesgroup solidarity ... Food is used by everyhuman society on earth to communicatemessages including the affirmation ofsocial ties, the practice of religiousbeliefs, and the expression of national andethnic identities. Food is used to reinforcemessages of group solidarity and for asociety to engage in ritual, ceremony, andcelebration. Food has symbolic meaningbecause it is literally taken into the bodyand has associations of life, home, family,and health.”

“I think a lot of cities look at these typesof ordinances as a quick and easy responseto homelessness in their community, but thepress coverage was overwhelmingly nega-tive,” stated Clanton, adding that the holi-day season created a peculiar backdrop forthe city’s crackdown.

“Ultimately it’s an inefficient use ofscarce resources. You have to think aboutthe overwhelming amount of money they’respending on prosecuting people.”

There’s a photograph on the Internet ofa man relaxing under a tree in StranahanPark with a sign saying, “We Won’t StopUntil the Last Belly Is Full.” The park is agood setting for such a sentiment.

Frank Stranahan, for whom the park isnamed, is considered the founder of FortLauderdale for establishing the first bank-ing service, post office, trading post, andferry. He traded with native populations,noting in a statement in 1917 on the con-ditions of the Florida Seminoles beforethe Committee on Investigation of theIndian Service, House of Representatives,that the Indian camp a half mile away“had plenty of corn, Indian pumpkins,sweet potatoes, and Lima beans” and were“living in no want whatever at that time.”He testified to the committee that “as fastas they clear a piece of hammock andwork it two or three years, some whiteman comes along and takes it.”

The land grab evident to FrankStranahan 100 years ago isn’t over in FortLauderdale. The nationwide struggle overpeople’s right to share together on publiccommon ground is well illustrated in FortLauderdale’s effort to essentially handcuffthe local Food Not Bombs chapter. TheSouthern Legal Counsel’s response onbehalf of Food Not Bombs will helpdetermine, at least in the courts, whetherwe can still share a bowl of soup.

Food Not Bombs Sues to Share Food in Florida

“Whose Park? Our Park! Stop the Assault on the Homeless.”

Fort Lauderdale police have arrested Food Not Bombs and others who share foodin public places, including 90-year-old Arnold Abbott, a World War II veteran.

Efforts to criminalize homelessness are “always aresponse to the visibility of homelessness in publicspaces,” said Kirsten Clanton of Southern Legal Counsel.“It’s business interests. It’s an effort to sanitize publicspace, often for tourism and tourist dollars.”

March 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T6

by Carol Denney

Aunanimous Berkeley CityCouncil took a tentative steptoward curbing controversialpolice crowd-control tech-

niques on Tuesday, February 10, in coun-cil chambers packed with dozens of peo-ple telling chilling stories of Berkeleypolice abuse during December’s localprotests over nationwide police killings ofunarmed black citizens.

A temporary moratorium on the use ofCS gas, wooden and rubber projectiles,and over-the-shoulder baton strikes pro-posed by Councilmember Jesse Arreguinpassed unanimously. CS gas is more com-monly called “tear gas,” but Physiciansfor Human Rights considers that a “mis-nomer for a group of poisonous gaseswhich, far from being innocuous, haveserious acute and longer-term adverseeffects on the health of significant num-bers of those exposed.”

The council also passed a motion to sup-port vehicle and body-worn cameras bypolice, an investigation into December’sprotests by Berkeley’s Police ReviewCommission, and a motion to supportnational demands from Ferguson Action, anorganization working to address the milita-rization of police and specifically supportcommunities of color primarily affected bypolicies such as racial profiling.

The public comment that night broughtforth deeply troubling testimony frompeople whose efforts to nonviolentlyprotest police killings of unarmed blackcitizens such as Michael Brown and EricGarner were met with beatings, CS gas,projectiles shot directly into crowds.

Many of those arrested were given noway to leave an area. People attempting tohelp injured, fallen individuals were alsobeaten, and emergency vehicles were pro-hibited from assisting.

Polly Armstrong, a former policereview commissioner, former city coun-cilmember, and current CEO of theBerkeley Chamber of Commerce, spokein support of the police use of woodenand rubber projectiles, saying the police“need our support.” Vice Chairman of theChamber’s Board Steven Donaldson alsoobjected to the temporary moratorium,stating, “We do not need to disempowerthe police right now.”

But Armstrong herself was one of theauthors of a policy created when she wason the Police Review Commission in1992 requiring the police to move a crowdonly as quickly as they could reasonablywalk. A video reveals that this policy waswidely ignored by police in the December2014 protests.

The rest of the public testimony wasoverwhelming in its support of a tempo-rary moratorium. Moni Law, a 55-year-old African-American woman, testifiedthat she was hit in the back with a batonand “had a flash grenade thrown” at herfeet while trying to help another injuredwoman. “I was born in 1960 in Alabama,”she said to the council, which was clearlymoved by her words.

Students, bystanders, and protestersalike described trying repeatedly to showsolidarity with nationwide protests overpolice abuse and being met by theBerkeley police with aggressive tactics,including CS gas, “less-than-lethal” pro-

jectiles shot into crowds, and “kettling”groups who were given no way to leave,caught between two police lines whichwould jab or beat them without any wayto exit an area.

The Berkeley Police Department’sgeneral response to criticism of their tac-tics suggests that the vandalism and spo-radic violence toward police officersmade CS gas, projectiles, and batonstrikes necessary. But testimony onFebruary 10 included many people whotried to protect local stores from vandal-ism and did their utmost to keep thepeace. Even police statements seem toagree that the troublemakers in the crowdwere a small minority.

This is not the first time a temporarymoratorium on chemical agents and pro-jectiles has been proposed in Berkeley. InNovember of 1991, a similar proposalcame before the council after well-docu-mented cases of protest-related policemisconduct in a meeting featuring “skunkoil.” That night, a protester ran onto theBerkeley Community Theater’s stage andpoured a noxious liquid onto some of thecouncilmembers to convey her disap-proval and was one of several arrests.

(I was also arrested that night; thenBerkeley Chief of Police Dash Butler andthen City Manager Michael Brown bothclaimed that I had committed an assaulton the Chief. Both men lost their jobs, andI was acquitted, when Channel 7 newsfootage revealed that I had been peaceful-

ly standing still, waiting for my opportu-nity to speak when I was tackled frombehind by police officers who inexplica-bly dragged me from the BerkeleyCommunity Theater to jail.)

The 1991 moratorium proposal nevergot the votes it needed. But on February10, 2015, supported in part by the undeni-able and well-documented experiences of,among others, Berkeley Rep patrons andpassers-by who had to contend withclouds of CS gas drifting into parkingstructures as part of their holiday experi-ence in Berkeley, the vote for the policereform was unanimous.

The long wait for these proposals, origi-nally scheduled for December, was frustrat-ing for many who had come to repeatedmeetings only to be met with inaction,especially those primarily at risk.

Even the FBI’s self-reported data revealthat a white police officer killed a blackperson nearly two times a week during aseven-year period ending in 2012, whichmost people agree is a severely underre-ported statistic. But the coalition of studentand civil rights groups which pressured thecouncil seems well aware that this morato-rium is only a modest beginning.

Communities whose police forces havebody cameras, for instance, end up withhours of footage and no particular expertisein storing and sorting them, often con-founded by public records act requests forfootage. The Police Review Commission

City Council Takes Action on Police Abuse—FinallyIn response to police abuseof protesters in December,the Berkeley City Councilvotes for a moratorium onCS gas and wooden andrubber projectiles.

by Carol Denney “We believe ‘tear gas’ is a misnomer for

a group of poisonous gases which, far frombeing innocuous, have serious acute andlonger-term adverse effects on the health ofsignificant numbers of those exposed.”

Physicians for Human Rights wrotethe above paragraph after studying thehealth effects of chemical agents com-monly known as tear gas after the gov-ernment of the Republic of Korea admit-ted using 351,000 canisters against civil-ians in 1987. Physicians for HumanRights worked to “bring the skills andinfluence of the American medical com-munity to the defense of internationalhuman rights.”

Under the Chemical WeaponsConvention of 1997, CS gas was bannedfrom use as a method of warfare becauseit is capable of causing long-term inca-pacitation and even death, but it continuesto be used by law enforcement for riotcontrol, as Berkeley residents witnessedduring the December 2014 protests ofpolice killings around the nation.

The police claim the use of chemicalagents was necessary because of projec-tiles thrown at them, if press reports areaccurate. The hurling of rocks and bot-tles at anyone is an outrage, to be sure.It is also a criminal act, and most of ushave seen that an extremely small groupof two or three individuals uses thecover of a larger crowd to throw objects.The larger, peaceful crowd is as much atrisk as the police officers.

Responding with CS gas which blinds,terrorizes, and in some cases incapacitatesthe entire crowd, rather than the individu-als responsible for throwing objects, is anabsurd, logic-free police response. Theobject-throwing individuals are usuallyfurthest away, least liable to be affectedby the chemical agents, and the haze inthe street further obscures their move-ments and identities. The peaceful crowdis liable to get hurt trying to find a wayout of the toxic air.

Our community has work to do toensure that we as a community can safe-ly express our outrage at the injustice ofracism, which falls primarily on peopleof color. We need to demand that ourpolice force be required to respect thoserights, which are precious.

Don’t Call It Tear Gas

Protesters gathered at the Ferguson Police Department after Michael Brown was killed on August 9, 2014. InDecember 2014, the Berkeley police violently attacked demonstrators who were protesting this police killing.

Photo credit:Jamelle Bouie

A memorial sign protests the police killing of Michael Brown. Photo: Jamelle Bouie

See Berkeley Takes Action on Police page 7

March 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 7

investigation has its own conflicts of inter-est as a group which now operates primari-ly in secret because of the Copley decision,a state law arguing that investigations ofpolice are private personnel matters.

The Berkeley Police Department initial-ly denied a public records act informationrequest from Copwatch’s Andrea Pritchett,then responded to a second request with acomically redacted document resembling aMondrian painting without the color. Butthe long wait of more than 20 years sincethe last organized effort to change contro-versial police tactics has not discouragedthose who know that policy change is notjust possible — for communities of color,it is crucial.

Jim Chanin, one of the originalfounders of Berkeley’s Police ReviewCommission, spoke to the City Council infavor of the moratorium, pointing out thatSan Francisco police don’t use CS gas orprojectiles as crowd control. “This is theonly city where testimony like this is hap-

pening,” he said, noting that on April 28,1992, the Berkeley City Council passed alaw requiring that “BPD take direct super-visory responsibility over mutual aid,”and that “prior to deployment in the fieldBPD advise mutual aid units that they arerequired to comply” with Berkeley policy.

Chanin finished his testimony by not-ing that Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates hadat one time questioned why the Berkeleypolice would even have an application foran armored vehicle.

George Lippman of the Peace andJustice Commission and the PoliceReview Commission pointed out that“another flare-up could happen at anytime... What we really want to do is pre-vent these situations.”

Long-time community activist and for-mer Councilmember Ying Lee Kelly stated,“Non African Americans do not experiencewhat African Americans experience ... Ican’t believe that my City Council wouldallow this kind of behavior.”

Berkeley Councilmember MaxAnderson specifically thanked the Black

Student Unions at UC Berkeley, BerkeleyHigh School, and Berkeley City Collegewho joined together to organize a peacefulmarch to the council meeting with ringingwords of support. “You are part of a con-tinuum,” Anderson said. “Tyranny willflourish if it’s not unchecked. We havesent treasury and troops around the world... saying no government should oppressits own people ... Yes, black lives matter.”

At the City Council meeting onFebruary 24, two weeks later, Andersonwrestled even more police restrictions withstronger language from the council, callingfor an examination and analysis of theDrug Task Force, banning the “four-waysearch clause” allowing even publicsearches at any time or place without prob-able cause or warrant, banning the hand-cuffing of citizens prior to arrest, recom-mending a public safety model that doesn’trely on militaristic tools and techniques,recommending a restoration of mentalhealth funding “on an urgent basis,” andcalling for the creation of an inclusivecommunity task force to promote policeaccountability and civilian oversight.

Even initially dubious members of the

City Council seemed to recognize whatthe crowd clarified a second time with riv-eting testimony: namely, that police tac-tics in the historically black parts ofBerkeley are dramatically different than inother parts of town and disproportionatelyimpact poor people, people of color, andpeople struggling with mental illness.

Anderson was clear that the weakness-es in earlier proposals had inspired hiseffort to address what so many citizensillustrated with chilling personal stories.As the local president of the NAACP,Mansour Id-Deen, put it, “It’s almost as ifthere’s two separate Berkeleys.”

“I drafted this language because thelanguage in the packet on the agenda wasnot adequate,” Anderson said. “When wego to seek out remedies we need to godeeper.” He added, “The low-lying fruit ispolitically easy, fiscally easy, and sociallyeasy. The Police Review Commission hasto be restored to its proper place.”

Editor: After attending the City Councilhearings, reporter Carol Denney wrote, “Iam so glad I went to the meeting, a feeling Ialmost never have! It was like seeing a tidalwave of moral strength rise in the room.”

Berkeley Takes Action on Police Abusefrom page 6

That is why another great figure in thehistory of nonviolence, Dorothy Day,often quoted Dostoyevsky: “Love inaction is a harsh and dreadful thing com-pared to love in dreams.”

In his recent speech in San Francisco,Lewis described the sit-ins of theNashville Student Movement when col-lege students risked their lives in an effortto integrate lunch counters, restaurantsand movie theaters.

“You’d be sitting there in an orderly,peaceful, nonviolent fashion waiting to beserved,” Lewis said, “and someone wouldcome up and spit on you, or put a lightedcigarette out in your hair or down yourback, or pour hot coffee on us, or pull usoff the lunch counter stool. You’d justlook straight ahead.”

Neither threats nor beatings nor jailcould shake their commitment to freedomfor their people. Lewis had just turned 20the week before he was first arrested.

“The first time I was arrested was inFebruary 27, 1960,” he said. “I felt liber-ated. I felt like I’d crossed over. So I saidto myself, ‘Arrest us, jail us, beat us, whatelse can you do?’ We started singing, ‘I’mnot afraid of your jail.’”

THE LAST SUPPER

His next trial by fire was on an inter-state bus trip through the Deep South.Lewis was one of the first FreedomRiders, an integrated group of black andwhite activists who boarded a Greyhoundand a Trailways bus in Washington, D.C.,in an attempt to pressure the U.S. govern-ment to uphold the 1960 Supreme Courtdecision that had declared segregatedinterstate bus travel to be unconstitutional.

On May 3, 1961, the night before thefirst Freedom Riders left Washington,D.C., the group of 13 activists gathered ata Chinese restaurant. John Lewis, theyoung man from Troy, Alabama, hadnever been to a Chinese restaurant beforein his life. “It was wonderful,” he said.

In the middle of the “wonderful meal,”a member of their group reminded themall of the life-and-death nature of theirmission. He said, “As you eat, rememberthis may be like the Last Supper.”

This meal is compellingly portrayed inMarch: Book Two, with a full page show-ing the names and faces of each of theFreedom Riders. After the Last Supperremark, Lewis wrote, “We all knew whathe said was true — the wills we’d signedthat week served as testament.”

The next day, May 4, 1961, membersof the group boarded the two buses andleft Washington, D.C., to travel throughthe South as an integrated group.

Lewis was literally floored by an attackthat took place a few days later in RockHill, South Carolina, when he and his seat-mate, a white man named Albert Bigelow,“tried to enter a so-called white waitingroom. Members of the Klan attacked us andleft us lying in a pool of blood.”

When the white men began assaultingJohn Lewis, Bigelow stepped betweenhim and his attackers, trying to protectLewis, but the mob started beatingBigelow, pounding him to the floor.

Bigelow had been a U.S. NavyCommander in World War II, but thenbecame a pacifist. In 1958, Bigelow sailedhis four-man ship, The Golden Rule, intothe atomic testing site in the South Pacificto disrupt U.S. nuclear weapons tests inthe Marshall Islands.

After Lewis and Bigelow were beaten tothe ground and bloodied, the police arrivedand asked if they wanted to press charges.“We said, ‘No, we come with peace andlove and nonviolence.’ They left us blood-ied. The Freedom Rides continued.”

THE BURNING BUS

When their buses pulled into Anniston,Alabama, on May 14, a racist mob and theKu Klux Klan attacked the Greyhoundbus, slashed its tires, then firebombed it afew miles outside of town, and then beganbeating the Freedom Riders as theyescaped the burning bus.

Shortly after that first bus was burned,the second bus arrived in Anniston, andKlansmen boarded it and brutally beat theFreedom Riders. Walter Bergman, age 61,was beaten nearly to death and repeatedlykicked in the head, causing permanentbrain damage. He soon suffered a severestroke that left him paralyzed and in awheelchair for the rest of his life.

As nightmarish as this violence was, theFreedom Rides were a trailblazing achieve-ment on the road to liberation. The entirenation witnessed the unbelievable courageof the Freedom Riders, and became moreaware of the deadly levels of brutality andhatred being used to preserve the system ofracism and segregation.

When Lewis was describing for us theway he and Bigelow refused to presscharges against their assailants, I wasstunned to hear how a 21-year-old manfound the forgiveness to say, “We comewith peace and love and nonviolence.”

Yet, this story has an even more unfor-

gettable ending. In February of 2009, oneof the Klan members who had taken partin the beating of Lewis and Bigelow cameto visit Rep. Lewis in his Washingtonoffice. Elwin Wilson was now in his 70s,and he came with his son, in his 40s.

As Lewis recalled the visit, the mansaid to him, “Mr. Lewis, I’m one of thepeople that attacked you and your seat-mate. I want to apologize. Will you for-give me?”

I said, “Yes, I accept your apology.Yes, I forgive you.”

“He started crying. His son started cry-ing. They hugged me. I hugged themback. And I started crying.”

Lewis said he visited with “this gentle-man” three other times.

THE WAY OF LOVE

I was astonished by his ability to for-give. And then John Lewis told us whatthis encounter truly meant, and what thespirit of nonviolence was all about.

Lewis said, “That is the power of theway of peace, the power of the way oflove, the power of the way of nonviolence— to be reconciled. In the final analysis,we are one people. We are one family. Weall live in the same house — not just theAmerican house, but the world house.”

This lesson was given to us by a manwho had lived through a lifetime of segre-gation and cruel mistreatment, whoendured many beatings from violent mobsand unjust jail sentences at the hands ofracist police. A man who saw buses burn-ing, who endured the hellish conditions ofMississippi’s infamous state penitentiary,Parchman Farm, and who was part of amovement where too many friends andministers and activists and Sunday School

students were murdered and martyred. It is horrible what this nation allowed to

happen to idealistic young people who gaveso much of themselves — sometimes eventheir very lives — in the struggle for free-dom and equality. It is a terrible crime thatour nation has never fully atoned for.

A VISION OF HOPE

Yet, Lewis ended his presentation in SanFrancisco with a shining vision of hopeabout creating the beloved community.

He said, “I must tell you tonight that inspite of 40 arrests, jailings, and being beat-en and left bloody not only in Rock Hill,South Carolina, but at the Greyhound busstation in Montgomery where I was hit inthe head by a member of an angry mobwith a wooden Coca Cola crate, I am stillhopeful, still optimistic.

“We must never, ever give up. We mustnever, ever give in. We must never get lostin a sea of despair. We must keep the faith.I’m not going to turn back. And you mustnot turn back. You must not give up. Youmust not give in. We can create the belovedcommunity here in America.”

Those who were able to listen to JohnLewis in San Francisco were amazed andilluminated by his spirit. One of the mostradical champions of civil rights, one of thestrongest fighters from the movement daysof the 1960s, is also one of our most elo-quent defenders of love and peace.

His last words that night shine like thestars. They should be engraved as a livinglegacy on the Edmund Pettus Bridge inSelma, Alabama. John Lewis said, “Youmust continue to spread the good news,the way of love, the way of peace, theway of nonviolence.”

from page 2

John Lewis and the Spirit of Selma

The cover art of March: Book Two depicts John Lewis speaking at the massiveMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, when he was 25.

March 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T8

by Terry Messman

Recently, I returned to the PacificSchool of Religion (PSR) toattend the inaugural ceremonyfor the seminary’s new presi-

dent, Rev. David Vásquez-Levy, and toreceive the Distinguished Alumni award. Ihadn’t returned to PSR since I graduated30 years ago, and as the memories cameback, I realized that the course of my lifewas changed dramatically in those intenseyears in the Berkeley seminary.

I’ve never told the story of Street Spirit’sorigins before, but looking back now, I canclearly see that its birthplace was in theProtestant and Catholic seminaries of theGraduate Theological Union (GTU) whereI studied systematic theology, liberationtheology, and the peacemakers andprophets of diverse spiritual traditions.

I entered Pacific School of Religion in1981 on a fellowship from the NorthAmerican Theological Fund that I wasawarded while serving two six-month sen-tences in federal prison in the MojaveDesert for acts of anti-nuclear resistance. Ihad been arrested with a Lutheran minister,Rev. John Lemnitzer, at Malmstrom AirForce Base, and arrested again at BangorNaval Base with Catholic theologian andpeace activist James Douglass.

Now, 30 years later, on Jan. 29, 2015,at the inauguration of the seminary’s newpresident, I found that the spirit of justicelives on at PSR. Rev. David Vásquez-Levy is one of only four persons of Latinodescent serving as president of an accred-ited seminary in the United States.

Rev. Vásquez-Levy helped to providefood, housing and legal assistance to thevictims of the Postville Raid in 2008, thelargest single raid of a U.S. workplacewhere Immigration and CustomsEnforcement arrested nearly 400 immi-grant workers at the meatpacking plant inPostville, Iowa. Rev. Vásquez-Levybecame a leading voice in advocating formore humane immigration polices.

In another sign of justice at PSR, manyseminary students were arrested inBerkeley on Dec. 8, 2014, after joining adie-in and march in protest of the grandjury decisions in the police killings ofMichael Brown and Eric Garner.

They issued “an open letter to commu-nities of faith” and declared that “disrup-tive action” is needed to “dismantle thesystems of racial injustice that create theworld in which Michael Brown, EricGarner and countless others are killedwith impunity.” Several clergy and pro-fessors at PSR and GTU spoke out infavor of their nonviolent resistance.

ARRESTS OF SEMINARIANS

This faculty support of their protestreminded me how important that kind ofsupport had been to Spirit affinity groupwhen we organized acts of civil disobedi-ence that resulted in the arrests of semi-narians at Livermore Lab in the 1980s.

At first, the arrests of scores of priestsand ministers-in-training was controversial.Yet, after three years of resistance that sawlarge numbers of seminarians arrested at thenuclear weapons lab, Father MichaelBlecker, O.S.B., the president of the GTUfrom 1982-1987, spoke out in the DailyCalifornian, saying that he was proud of allthe seminarians who had been arrested fortaking a stand for peace.

Spirit affinity group had been formedduring a nonviolence training Darla Ruckerand I held at the Dominican seminary onHoly Hill, and quickly grew into a commu-nity of activists who lived, breathed,dreamed and prayed nonviolent resistanceto the war machine. Spirit members DarlaRucker, Ken Butigan, Patti Runo, BruceTurner, Rick Cotton, Jim Bridges and I

were arrested many times at LivermoreLaboratory, Concord Naval WeaponsStation, the Federal Building and theSalvadoran consulate in San Francisco.

THE PATH TO PEACEMAKING

I had started out on the path to peace-making when I was arrested repeatedly as ajournalism student for acts of trespass atMalmstrom Air Force Base in protest ofnuclear missiles; followed by arrests atRocky Flats in Colorado where all thenation’s plutonium triggers were made; anda risk-filled trespass into the high-securityzone of the Bangor Naval Base inWashington where Marines were autho-rized to use lethal force as they guarded thebunkers that stored nuclear warheads.

After I was tried and sentenced to twosix-month sentences in federal prison,Rev. Lynne Fitch, a Disciples of Christminister and university professor, changedmy entire life by encouraging me to attendseminary to build a foundation to supporta lifetime of peace activism.

After spending several months in prison,I came to Pacific School of Religion in1981. When asked what kind of ministry Iwas pursuing, I replied, “working for peaceand justice.” Some reacted in disbelief atthis career path, as if I had said I was goingto spend my life chasing unicorns.

Yet, the PSR administration offeredgenuine support for my seemingly quixot-ic path. One of PSR’s strengths is that,even as it prepares hundreds of studentsfor the ordained ministry in several main-line denominations, it also supports stu-dents who follow their conscience anddevelop alternative forms of ministry. Ifound that both Methodist ministers-in-training and impractical dreamers battlingwindmills can find support at PSR.

ENGRAVED FOREVER

Many theologians I studied in seminarychanged my life immeasurably. Theirinsights flashed like lightning in my mindand remain engraved in my soul to this day.

I studied The Cost of Discipleship bythe great Lutheran pastor DietrichBonhoeffer, a student of Gandhian nonvi-olence who was executed in a concentra-tion camp for his resistance to NaziGermany. I was greatly inspired by Jesusand the Nonviolent Revolution by AndreTrocme, a courageous French pastor whoprovided safe haven for thousands ofJewish refugees from Nazi Germany.

I became immersed in the works ofThomas Merton, a contemplative monkwho became one of the most propheticvoices against the Vietnam War andnuclear weapons. Merton wrote: “A theol-

ogy of love may also conceivably turn outto be a theology of revolution. In anycase, it is a theology of RESISTANCE, arefusal of the evil that reduces a brother orsister to homicidal desperation.”

After all these years, Daniel Berrigan, apriest, poet and “peace criminal,” is stillone of the most important role models inmy life. I named my son Daniel after him.Berrigan wrote: “We have chosen to bepowerless criminals in a time of criminalpower. We have chosen to be branded aspeace criminals by war criminals.”

Archbishop Oscar Romero, murderedafter telling the armed forces of El Salvadorto stop slaughtering their own people,declared: “The cry for liberation of thispeople is a shout that rises up to God andthat nothing and no one can now stop.”

Gustavo Gutierrez, a Dominican priestand founder of liberation theology, devot-ed his life to overcoming the oppressionof the poor. He wrote: “It used to becalled mercy, then charity, then commit-ment; today it is called solidarity. To givefood to the hungry, drink to the thirsty,clothing to the naked, shelter to the home-less, and to welcome the stranger areactions so basic that at the end of time weshall have to render an account of them.”

The Genesis of Street Spirit in a Seminary

Members of Spirit chain themselves to an MX model at Livermore Lab on Good Friday. The author is lying on the missile.

The police ordered huge earthmoving machinery to slam into the missile while members of Spirit were still chained to it.

See The Genesis of Street Spirit page 10

March 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 9

by Terry Messman

One simple song — a country spiri-tual first performed by HankWilliams and later by Joan Baez

— may have had a more lasting impact onmy life than all the theologians and schol-ars I studied in seminary in Berkeley.

The seven seminaries of the GraduateTheological Union (GTU) taught the newlyarising forms of liberation theology from allover the world. In El Salvador andGuatemala, Brazil and Argentina, thePhilippines and South Africa, people offaith were standing in solidarity with thepoorest of the poor and courageously work-ing for political and economic liberation.

When I took PSR Professor RobertMcAfee Brown’s course in liberation theol-ogy, I saw clearly, with new eyes, that therewas an entire unseen world of poverty andoppression all around us — even around theseminaries on Berkeley’s Holy Hill. Yetfew activists paid any attention to thepoverty and injustice so close to home.

THE LONG LONELINESS

On the streets all around us, multitudeswere suffering from hunger, illness andhomelessness — suffering, too, from pro-found loneliness and isolation, abandonedby a society that treated poor people asoutcasts and pariahs. The long loneliness.

Several times, while I was working inthe Graduate Theological Union library,well-dressed graduate students would sneerin distaste at the presence of homeless peo-ple and demand that they be removed fromthe library as a blight and nuisance. I real-ized that nothing less than a Biblical para-ble was happening right before my eyes —an unsettling reminder of the parable ofLazarus who begged in vain for food at therich man’s gate (Luke 16: 19-31).

In my first year at seminary, I read TheLong Loneliness, Dorothy Day’s memoirof founding the Catholic Worker inresponse to hunger and injustice. So, thatsummer, shortly after Darla Rucker and Iwere arrested with other Spirit affinitygroup members in the massive June 1982demonstration at Livermore Lab, we trav-eled to Los Angeles to volunteer at theCatholic Worker.

I was staggered when I saw the vastscale of hunger, poverty and human miseryon Skid Row. For several decades, the LosAngeles Catholic Worker had providedmeals, health care and shelter for an enor-mous number of desperately poor people.

Shortly after we arrived, the communi-ty celebrated the birthday of one of theCatholic Workers by bringing out a cakewith a frosting inscription: “If you wantpeace, work for justice.” That has nowbecome a timeworn slogan, but I washaunted by that simple phrase.

Members of the Catholic Worker oftenwere arrested for acts of nonviolent resis-tance to war and nuclear weapons. Yet,they spent 90 percent of their workinghours providing meals, clothing and healthcare to poor people. That was a deep chal-lenge to my own values and priorities.

SINGING IN A STRANGE LAND

Every day, they served meals to hun-dreds of destitute people at their kitchenon Skid Row. And every day, they sang.

Their singing raised in my mind thequestion from Psalm 137: “How can wesing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”Skid Row truly was a strange and oppres-sive land where thousands of people werelocked in captivity by merciless, grindingpoverty. Yet, the Catholic Workers sang. Inever got over that — the songs they sangin the midst of terrible hardships.

One song I learned that summerchanged my life forever. “The Tramp onthe Street” is a country spiritual written byGrady and Hazel Cole, first sung by the

legendary Hank Williams and later byfolksinger Joan Baez.

The song is based on a parable by Jesusabout a poor man who asks for food at therich man’s gate — the same parable thathad come involuntarily to mind when well-heeled graduate students had complainedabout the homeless people at the gates ofthe Graduate Theological Union.

“The Tramp on the Street” made aneverlasting impression. I was stunned byits power. For years, I was unable to getthe song out of my head, and I still needto hear it to this day. The lyrics justfloored me the very first time I heard it.

“Only a tramp was Lazarus who begged,He who laid down by the rich man’s gate.He begged for crumbs from the rich man to eat.But they left him to die like a tramp on the street.”

It was devastating to hear the song onSkid Row. The lyrics exploded inside likea depth charge, exposing the way the rich-est nation on earth had abandoned mil-lions of homeless people, and then, byrefusing to take action to alleviate theirpoverty, had condemned them to die “likea tramp on the street.”

Yet, if the first verse was overwhelming,the next verse was heartbreaking. It stillgets to me every time I hear the song,because it brings out the full human dimen-sions of the tragedy that takes place everysingle time a life is lost on the street.

At first glance, the lyrics may sound sen-timental. They are not. Every parent knowsthey tell the truth with uncompromisingemotional honesty. Every parent feels thesame tenderness and protectiveness towardstheir child, and the song beautifullyexpresses the depth of a mother’s love.

“He was some mother’s darling,He was some mother’s son.Once he was fair, once he was young.His mother rocked him, her little darling to sleep.But they left him to die like a tramp on the street.”

The song was a revelation. Every singleperson on the street was once some moth-er’s darling son or precious daughter. Nomatter what the cruel years on the streetsmay have done, he was once fair andyoung, and he was loved beyond the telling.

The mother in this song cannot see intothe future, when the darling son she isrocking will end up a homeless man,shunned in life and abandoned to an early

death. The song’s stinging impact derivesprecisely from its double vision. It sees amother tenderly caring for her child, andat the same time, it sees into the futurewith piercing clarity, and knows that herchild’s life will end in tragedy.

DEFACED AND DISFIGURED

This man, once so fair and so young,will be defaced and disfigured by thehardships of life on the street. A personmade in the image of God will be dese-crated. And a society will refuse to care.

The song somehow ended all those use-less and unfair questions about who is to beclassified as the “worthy poor” or the“undeserving poor.” Those are not the rightquestions, and they never were. The onlyquestion is: What is our human responsewhen some mother’s son or daughter endsup dying on the street?

Songwriters Grady and Hazel Cole stillhave one more insight to share, the exactsame insight I had discovered in theworks of Gustavo Gutierrez, Jose MiguezBonino, Leonardo Boff and the other lib-eration theologians I was studying.

Once, long ago, another child wasgreatly loved by his parents, only to dielike a tramp on the street. With unflinch-ing honesty, this song describes how aparent’s love turned into bitter tragedy.

“They pierced his sides,his hands and his feet.And they left him to dielike a tramp on the street.”

The song describes the execution ofJesus at the hands of the Roman Empire interms that link his death to the deaths ofevery mother’s child on the streets of mod-ern America. In truth, it is the same death.“As you do it to the least of these...”

“Mary she rocked him, her little darling to sleep, but they left him to die like a tramp on the street.”

The song has alternate endings, depend-ing on the singer. Both endings are highlymeaningful. In Joan Baez’s version, one ofthe pre-eminent voices of the peace move-ment sings out in sorrow for the poor man’sson killed in battle while an unthinkingnation glories in its patriotic triumph. It isone of Baez’s finest moments.

“Red, white and blue, and victory sweet,But they left him to die like a tramp on the street.”

The original ending by Hank Williams isa disquieting warning that some have

rejected angels unaware. Jesus was home-less too, so who is that Stranger we turnaway from our door?

“If Jesus should come and knock on your door,For a place to lie down or bread from your store,Would you welcome him in or turn him away?”

This same insight into the nature ofhuman solidarity has deeply affected thethinking of liberation theologians in LatinAmerica. We are all one body. Those whoare crushed or crucified by poverty arepart of the Body of Christ, and their livesare no less sacred than the man who dieda criminal’s death 2,000 years ago.

TOM JOAD’S ‘ONE BIG SOUL’Woody Guthrie perfectly captured the

secular equivalent of this vision of solidari-ty in “Tom Joad,” a song inspired by JohnSteinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath,about the struggles of Dust Bowl refugees.

In Guthrie’s magnificent song, TomJoad and Preacher Casey come to see thatall people share “one big soul.” They real-ize that they are inseparably linked to allthe poor and hungry children, and to allthe people fighting for their rights.

As Tom Joad flees the deputies and thelaw, this is how he describes his vision of“one big soul” to his mother.

“Everybody might be just one big soulWell it looks that’a way to me.Everywhere you look in the day or night,That’s where I’m gonna be, Ma,That’s where I’m gonna be.Wherever little children are hungry and cryWherever people ain’t free,Wherever men are fighting for their rightsThat’s where I’m gonna be, Ma.That’s where I’m gonna be.”

That summer when I first heard “TheTramp on the Street,” I had been listeningto Country Joe McDonald’s beautiful rendi-tion of “Tom Joad” on his masterpiecealbum, “Thinking of Woody Guthrie.” Bothsongs felt like chapters in the same saga ofparents and children torn apart by povertyand hunger on the streets of America.

Both songs expressed the same revela-tion about the human condition: Life issacred and it is not just some economicstatistic when someone hungers and suf-fers and dies on the streets of our nation.

It is some mother’s son, some mother’sdaughter. It is a human being made in theimage of God. It is a desecration of thesacred when that life is torn down.

They Left Him to Die Like a Tramp on the Street

In Dong Lin’s book, One American Reality, a policeman finds a homeless man dead on a San Francisco sidewalk. Dong Lin photo

March 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T10

I endlessly read the works of Rev.Martin Luther King and other civil rightsleaders. I came to believe that the FreedomMovement is the most courageous andvisionary campaign in our nation’s history.It is also the most important model of how ahuman life should be lived. It continues togive me so much hope and light.

TURNING WORDS INTO ACTION

In the light of those words, Spirit affin-ity group acted. We journeyed to PugetSound and boarded small sailboats toblock the launching of the first Tridentsubmarine armed with enough first-strikenuclear warheads to obliterate hundreds ofcities. As we began sailing into the path ofthe Trident sub, our fleet was attacked bynearly 100 U.S. Navy ships that rammedand battered our small boats, assaulted uswith high-powered water cannons, board-ed our small boats and pointed machineguns at us as they arrested us.

Members of Spirit journeyed toNicaragua on Witness for Peace delega-tions to stand in solidarity with the impov-

erished people of that embattled land whowere targeted by the U.S.-backed Contras.

In 1982 and 1983, Spirit affinity groupfounded the Good Friday protests atLivermore Laboratory. We carried a hugemodel of an MX Missile weighing severalhundred pounds to the busy intersectionleading into Livermore Lab, dropped it inthe center of the road, chained our bodiesto the missile, and threw the keys away.

We blocked the roads into the holocaustlaboratory for hours until the police pulledup with giant earth-moving machinery.They directed the driver of the machine toslam into the rear of the MX while we werestill chained to it. Father Bill O’Donnell ofSt. Joseph the Worker in Berkeley, a priestwho had joined with Spirit on many acts ofresistance, warned the driver, “We arechained to this missile. If you use thatmachine, you will crush us.”

After a long stand-off while countlesscars carrying nuclear lab workers wereprevented from entering Livermore Lab,the police cut us loose from the missilewith bolt-cutters, and violently arrestedus. The police slammed my head into thepavement until I vomited blood and bile

from the concussion they caused. We served one-month jail sentences in

Santa Rita Jail for our Good Friday protest.For theology students, a jail cell seemed theright place to be on Good Friday.

Spirit members were arrested nearlyevery month during the four years Iattended seminary. When I graduated witha Master of Divinity degree from PSR inJune 1985, I was not able to attend myown graduation, because I had just beenshipped off to Lompoc Federal Prisonafter Ken Butigan, Marie Pastrick and Iwere arrested at the Federal Building inSan Francisco for protesting the Reaganadministration’s war on Nicaragua.

After release from Lompoc, I beganwork with the American Friends ServiceCommittee (AFSC) where I created theHomeless Organizing Project under thesupervision of AFSC staff DavidHartsough. I spent my first decade atAFSC organizing dozens of takeovers ofabandoned houses in Oakland and protest-ing San Francisco’s Matrix program.

In 1995, Sally Hindman, a fellow PSRgraduate who was working with thehomeless community, asked me to createa street newspaper to be sold by homelesspeople. Sally organized and directed the

first Street Spirit vendor team and Ibecame the editor and publisher.

It seemed fitting that this new directionof “justice journalism” should have origi-nated from a fellow graduate of the PacificSchool of Religion. After taking classes atPSR about prophets who cried out for jus-tice for the oppressed, we co-founded apublication whose purpose is to give avoice to the poor and dispossessed.

I had entered seminary seeking a foun-dation for a lifetime of peace activism, butmy entire life was turned upside down atthe Pacific School of Religion. After beingimmersed for years in liberation theology,Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movementand Martin Luther King’s Poor People’sCampaign, I knew I had to seek justice forpoor and oppressed people. After graduat-ing from PSR, I got involved in the home-less movement and never looked back.

As Gustavo Gutierrez wrote: “It usedto be called mercy, then charity, thencommitment; today it is called solidarity.”

Terry Messman has been the editor ofStreet Spirit for 20 years. This is the firsttime in those two decades he has written apersonal story or described the origins ofStreet Spirit.

From the capitol steps, St. Mary’sSenior Advocate Angel McClain told howgetting arrested for being homeless pre-vented her from securing permanent hous-ing. “When I was out there (homeless), wewalked the streets all day and all night. Wehad nowhere where we could sit in peaceand rest. If you sit down, the police wouldharass you and you would have to move.

“I was arrested several times justbecause I was homeless. I had been puttingin applications for a place to live, andunfortunately from my arrest record and nothaving money or anywhere to live, itshowed up on my credit report. I had aninterview for an apartment, and do youwant to know why I was denied? I wasdenied because I owe court costs for beingarrested for no apparent reason.”

The press conference was held to releasea new report from the UC Berkeley PolicyAdvocacy Clinic, “California’s NewVagrancy Laws: The Growing Enactmentand Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Lawsin the Golden State.” UC Berkeley LawProfessor Jeffrey Selbin, director of thePolicy Advocacy Clinic, described how thereport carefully gathered impartial evidenceabout laws that affect homeless people.

“Last year, WRAP asked us to researchthe increasing criminalization of homelesspeople in California,” Selbin said. “Thevoices of advocates and the voices ofhomeless people are often ignored or dis-missed and WRAP wanted evidence-based research to confirm or refute theirexperience on the ground.... We did notpresume that the advocate’s story was theaccurate one.... We really looked for hardevidence and data.”

The report examined today’s anti-homeless laws and found many similari-ties to the discriminatory ordinances ofpast decades when laws were used toenforce racial discrimination and excludedisabled people and migrants.

“The first thing that stood out to us,” hesaid, “is that anti-homeless laws today andthe vagrancy laws of prior eras — restric-tions like anti-Okie laws, the SundownTowns and Ugly Laws that explicitly dis-

criminated against migrants, people of colorand people with physical disabilities —have come back and they’ve come backwith a vengeance. They are designed tokeep people out, to push people out.”

Selbin explained that in the 1970s, theU.S. Supreme Court declared these lawsunconstitutional. The Supreme Courtdeclared that the old vagrancy laws encour-aged arbitrary arrests and criminalizedinnocent activities and placed unfettereddiscretion at the hands of the police. “Theselaws have come back and are used primari-ly to target homeless people,” he said.

WRAP Executive Director Paul Bodensupported the report’s findings with a his-torical perspective. “The federal govern-ment eliminated the equivalent of 54 billiondollars a year in affordable housing fundingfrom 1979 to 1982,” he said, “which result-ed in opening our emergency shelter pro-grams in 1983. Then we are talking about aviolation of people’s human rights. Theresponse to that level of homelessness wasthe criminalization of people that are livingwithout housing!”

Right to Rest advocate RussellBartholow passionately described how hesurvived 15 long years on the streets withthe added trauma and hardship caused bypolice harassment and repeated incarcera-tions. “I was arrested continuously for sell-ing flowers by the side of the road,” he said.

Bartholow said he tried many times toapply for public benefits but could not getto his appointments because he was con-stantly being detained or arrested. “I wasarrested for vending, soliciting, solicitingwithin 500 feet of the freeway, sleeping....I’ve been arrested hundreds of times. In15 years, that adds up.”

Beside the freeway where he lived,Bartholow had grown a garden to help feedhimself and his friends. “They came in andpoisoned it with herbicide, destroyed it,”he said. “We would eat it, scrape it clean,which gave me cancer from the herbicide.”Deathly ill, he was put in the hospitalwhere he saw a homeless rights article withhis niece’s name on it: Jessica Bartholow.With his niece’s help, Russell Bartholow isnow receiving benefits, and has beenhoused for 18 months without one incidentof incarceration.

Russell’s niece, Jessica Bartholow, is alegislative advocate for California’sWestern Center on Law and Poverty andhas worked for nearly 15 years to over-come the harm that low-incomeCalifornians face due to a shredded safetynet. During one of the legislative visits

that the advocates attended, Jessica sharedthat what Russell needed was real help,not incarceration. She was able to helphim get his benefits in three months.

But the repercussions of the criminaliza-tion continue for Bartholow. Over theyears, he has accumulated an obsceneamount of court fines. “You’re not going tobelieve the amount of fines, millions of dol-lars,” he said. “I went in front of the judge,and he said, ‘Alright, you need to just makepayments.’ I told him if I could pay three-and-one-half million dollars in fines Iwouldn’t be out there panhandling.”

Nathaniel Miller, co-author of theCalifornia Vagrancy Laws report and UCBerkeley Policy Advocacy Clinic law stu-dent said the report studied 58 cities inCalifornia that are home to three-quartersof the state’s homeless population.

“The 58 cities have enacted at least 500anti-homeless laws,” Miller said. “All 58cities ban at least one daytime activity likestanding, sitting or resting in public.” Evencompassion for the hungry has been crimi-nalized in some cities. “Over 20 percent ofthe cities prohibit people from sharing foodwith homeless people,” Miller said.

Marina Fisher, report co-author andgraduate student at Goldman School ofPublic Policy, spoke about enforcementtrends. “What we found was that arrestsfor so-called vagrancy crimes tend to fol-low economic cycles,” Fisher said.“Specifically, they increase several yearsafter the onset of a recession and in thewake of the great recession, vagrancyarrests continue to rise to the present day.”

Their research showed that vagrancyarrests have risen by nearly 80 percent since2000, but arrests for drunkenness and disor-derly conduct have declined somewhat. “Sowhat we see increasingly is a pattern ofarresting and criminalizing people for theirstatus, not for specific behavior like drunk-enness or disorderly conduct,” Fisher said.“These laws perpetuate poverty, andenforcement is very expensive.”

Lindsay Walter, a UCB law studentand report co-author, said that the report’sfirst recommendation is to seek a solutionto the increased criminalization at thelevel of state government, with the Rightto Rest Act being a first step.

The second recommendation is toimprove data collection and reporting.“None of the cities that we researchedtracked enforcement against homelesspeople specifically, and none record thehousing status of those they are citing orarresting,” Walter said.

The third recommendation is for orga-nizations to work together and pool

resources. “Other law schools around thecountry are taking an interest in our reportand are going to conduct similar researchin their state,” Walter said. “And otherstates are taking a lead at the statewidelevel. Colorado and Oregon already haveRight to Rest Bills that have been intro-duced. It is time for California to step upand join in leading this cause!”

“We can’t arrest our way out of home-lessness,” said Eric Ares, a communityorganizer from the L.A. CommunityAction Network. “The ultimate solution toending homelessness is housing, but untilwe do that, we cannot continue this horri-ble cycle which is morally bankrupt andonly perpetuates the cycle of homeless-ness. It makes it harder to find housing ifyou have citations, arrests, warrants.”

In his closing remarks at the press con-ference, Ares said, “We are asking forpolitical leadership and political will.”

We need political will and PeoplePower to pass the WRAP Right to RestAct in California. We need to support andparticipate and donate to the movement topass a California Right to Rest Act.

Download a free copy of the UC PolicyAdvocacy Clinic’s new report “California’sNew Vagrancy Laws” at www.wraphome.org

from page 1

California’s New Vagrancy Laws

In a breakthrough for the humanrights of homeless people inCalifornia, State Senator Carol Liu

(D – La Cañada Flintridge) introducedthe Right to Rest Act (SB 608) to theState Senate on Feb. 27, 2015.

This legislation was developed by theWestern Regional Advocacy Project(WRAP) in order to end the alarmingtrend of cities passing laws that crimi-nalize homeless people and violate theircivil rights. SB 608, the Right to RestAct, would protect the rights of home-less people to move freely, rest, eat, andperform religious observations in publicspace as well as protect their right tooccupy a legally parked motor vehicle.

“It’s time to address poverty, mentalhealth, and the plight of the homelesshead-on as a social issue and not a crim-inal issue,” said Liu. “Citing homelesspeople for resting in a public space canlead to their rejection for jobs, educationloans, and housing, further denyingthem a pathway out of poverty.”

The Genesis of Street Spirit in a Seminaryfrom page 8

The Right to Rest ActIntroduced as SB 608 in the State Senate

In California, 58 cities haveenacted at least 500 anti-home-less laws that ban at least onedaytime activity like standing,sitting or resting in public.

March 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 11

and Oakland. One resident experiencedtheir first drive-by shooting less than fourdays after they left the Bulb, and the out-side of the building that they were placedin was pockmarked with bullet holes.

Another resident’s daughter was robbedwhen she went to the corner store. Thatsame household (the family was housed inRichmond) had the unpleasant experienceof someone being murdered on the side-walk directly outside their house.

Yet another household (also inRichmond) had a 30-person gang riotoccur in the street, directly in front oftheir house. Not one police officerresponded to the incident.

Now, we have “better lives”!?Now, we are unhappy, unrested, unset-

tled, cornered, trapped, cramped, hungry,isolated, alienated, overweight and under-nourished.

Regardless of any so-called “assistance”we received, we are unhelped. And now,helping ourselves is so much harder. And,with the members of our former communi-ty scattered between West Oakland andCentral Richmond (some of us are scatteredas far away as Portland, Oregon), helpingeach other is nearly impossible.

Some say the eviction “helped” us. Wewould most likely disagree with thatassertion. But, what do we know? Afterall, we were at Home on a Landfill!

With the housing market as it is, andwith the City of Albany devoting so muchmore money and effort towards prosecut-ing former Bulb residents than it has everspent on affordable housing, it comes asno surprise that virtually all of us wholived for years in Albany on the Bulbhave now moved to other nearby cities.

PERSECUTED ON THE STREETS

Those of us who still live on the streetsare under constant persecution due to theinhumane laws and ordinances that effec-tively criminalize our very existence.

In Albany, one must acquire a specialpermit to park an oversized vehicle (whichmust be registered to an Albany address) onany city street. Even then, that vehicle canonly park in one spot for up to 72 hours.Berkeley and Richmond also have ordi-nances against parking a vehicle in one spotfor more than 72 hours. Every city in thearea has laws against “camping.”

Despite the growing occurrence ofpoverty, the “commons” is hardly for thecommon people. Maybe it should berenamed the “privileges”?

While roughly half of us remain“homeless,” there are many of us (eventhose who live indoors) who long for ourhomes out on the Albany Bulb.

It is heartbreaking to go out to the Bulband see what has been done to our formerhome. Now that nobody lives there, trashreceptacles have been installed, as havedispensers with bags for people to pick upafter their dogs. Every improvement thatwe made to the land has been left in place(more cost-effective for the City and theParks District, to whom they are trying totransfer the land). Paths have beenwidened and turned into roads that vehi-cles now travel upon.

The beloved “Wild Art” of the Bulb isslowly being removed as “graffiti.” Soon,only the sculptures will remain (if that).

The City of Albany, whose police offi-cers originally suggested that people withnowhere else to live should live on theAlbany Bulb, is effectively trying to erasenearly all evidence of our communityhaving ever existed.

However, two projects which werestarted while we still lived out on the

Bulb, now aim to preserve the memory ofour community and the land while it wasstill under our care.

1. “Refuge in Refuse: A Homesteading,Art and Culture Project” by San Jose StateUniversity’s Robin Lasser can be seen atwww.refugeinrefuse.weebly.com

2. “The Atlas of the Albany Bulb” byUC Berkeley’s Susan Moffat can be seenat www.albanybulbatlas.org

Both projects can be seen and interact-ed with at San Francisco’s SOMArtsthrough March 12, 2015. [See “The Senseof Loss When a Community Is Erased” byElena Gross on page 4 of this issue.]

There is something at once encourag-ing and frustrating about the acknowl-edgement and acclaim that is finally beinggiven to our now-nonexistent communityand dwellings.

Where were these masters of academiawhen we were trying to alert the public atlarge about our impending displacement?

Why were they silent at City Councilmeetings when Bulb residents and oursupporters and advocates were beggingfor humane treatment and justice?

Why is it not part of the curriculum forstudents (with the exception of law stu-dents, to whom we owe much of the creditfor what little success we had in the law-suit to defend our dignity) to take on therole of activists and to fight for the rightsof the poor and the persecuted?

I could speculate: How can one tell aconclusive story that yet has no end? Howcould one study the archeology of a “pastpeople,” if that people still currently exists?

It was a strange and bittersweet experi-ence for those of us who managed toattend the opening night of “Refuge inRefuse: Homesteading, Art and CultureProject” on February 12.

That evening, I rode to San Francisco ina van with eight of my former neighborsand Osha Neumann, a civil rights lawyer,Bulb artist and like family to anyone whohas ever called the Albany Bulb their“Home.” I was thrilled to be seated next toMom-a-Bear! When we all lived on theBulb, she was one of my favorite people tohang out with. But, since our eviction, Ihave seen her only a handful of times.

When we arrived, a few of us stoppedshort of going inside the gallery immedi-ately. Instead, we paused to smoke ciga-rettes and breathe some fresh air after thevan ride across the Bay. While we wereout there, we got to greet our formerneighbors as they arrived.

We met and hugged and shook thehands of our friends’ family members.Many of us heard the words, “It’s so niceto finally meet you! I have heard so muchabout you!”

When we went inside, what greeted uswas essentially a room full of bite-sizepieces of our former lives, displayed withthe necessary blank white spaces inbetween and put into an easily digestibleformat for the public to enjoy.

Many of us compared the exhibit to a

postmortem of our community thatshowed people what certain features ofour lives looked like, so that they can feelsympathy and feel as though they want totake some action to save our community.

A community that doesn’t even existanymore.

One of the most positive things toresult from the recent exhibit is the open-ing up of people’s minds to the fact thatwe were a community of human beings,uprooted and evicted.

We were scattered to the wind, ourpeaceful lives sent spinning in upheaval.Traumatized and left to find our waywithout the stability that we had longenjoyed in our homes on the Albany Bulb(some of us, for over 20 years).

In my ongoing activism for the Bulband its refugees, sometimes I get askedwhat people can do to help.

Honestly, it is too late to “help” some-thing that has already been destroyed.

However, there are causes that peoplecan get involved in which aim to preventfuture devastation from happening to

other people and communities.Write to your local government repre-

sentatives. Tell them that you support thepassing of a Homeless Bill of Rights anda Right to Rest Act. No city in this stateshould be allowed to criminalize the exis-tence of people because they are deemedtoo poor or unsightly for the rest of thepublic to know about.

As for any opportunity to interact withthe former residents of the Albany Bulb?

On April 25, 2015, a contingent of for-mer residents plans to converge on theBulb. Many residents were barred fromsetting foot on ANY “open space” inAlbany for one year. April 25th marks theend of their “stay away order.”

There is a Facebook page that is main-tained by former Bulb residents and theirsupporters: www.facebook.com/sharethe-bulb.

Hopefully, some day, people who havevirtually nothing will be allowed to keepwhat little they have — instead of havingit destroyed in the name of “progress.”

from page 1

In April 2014, bulldozers squashed the homes and lives of over 60 residents living at the Albany Bulb. Robin Lasser photo

Tamara, Emmy and Mom-A-Bear sitting on Greg Kloehn's“Mobile Homes for the Homeless.”

Photo by BarbaraBoissevain

Home Is WhereThe Heart Is

March 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T12

by Lydia Gans

“Black Artists on Art: The LegacyExhibit” is a wide-ranging exhibition of thework of three generations of Black artistsnow on display until March 28 at OakstopGallery at 1701 Broadway in Oakland.

It provides a showcase for the work of36 artists. Art lovers visiting the gallerywill recognize some familiar names andbe introduced to new talents.

Oakstop is a large space which openedjust one year ago. Trevor Parham, 32, an artentrepreneuer, is the founder and director.He describes it as “a 10,000-square-footmixed-use facility dedicated to sharedworkspace, events, meetings and the prolif-eration of local entrepreneurs and artists.”

There are small rooms where peoplecan meet or work individually, a largeworkroom, and the gallery. Artworks areon exhibit throughout the space, includingin the halls and stairways.

Parham is a businessman as well as anartist. He is a man bursting with ideas andthe energy to carry them out. Art is notjust for hanging on walls, he maintains,but is used in all sorts of businesses, andhe sees Oakstop as a place for artists to

“grow Black artists and art as a business... to make (sure that) the work that we doas Black artists in arts is sustainable.”

Oakstop is located in downtownOakland, a neighborhood seeing increas-ing artistic and cultural developments.Shared workspaces — Parham also usesthe phrase coworking communities — areproliferating in the Bay Area. As member-ship in Oakstop increases, Parham will beacquiring more equipment and providingmore resources and services, runningmore workshops and public events.

The “Black Artists on Art” exhibit wasinspired by the publication of two vol-umes of Black Artists on Art by SamellaLewis. The first volume came out in 1969and the second soon after. Dr. Lewis is adistinguished African American historian,artist, author and educator.

Seeing that works of Black artists weregenerally not represented in museums andgalleries, she decided to make the imagesof them accessible to the public in theform of inexpensive books.

Parham and Samella Lewis’s grandson,Unity Lewis, have collaborated on variousprojects over the years. One day, Lewissuggested that they work together to con-

tinue and expand his grandmother’s BlackArtists on Art book project.

Parham was enthusiastic at the idea ofreviving the legacy of Samella Lewis and“going further from a perspective of figur-ing out how can we use some businesspractices in this and make this book pro-ject more relevant in the 21st century.How can we take Black Artists on Art andturn it into a larger brand, not just put outa book or two, but also use all these othernew forms of media.” The intention wasto get more public exposure for theseimportant forms of art. So when he startedOakstop a year ago, he established thegallery and mounted the Legacy Exhibit.

The title, “Black Artists on Art,”expresses the deeper, underlying idea ofboth the book and the exhibit. The vision isto go beyond simply displaying works ofart, and also having the artists articulatetheir reasons and intentions in creating art.

There are about 100 works by 36artists accompanied by their statementsdescribing what moves them to expressthemselves as they do — the emotionaland intellectual activation they get fromproducing this art to share with others.

Artist Abba Yahuda writes: “Eventhough a great majority of the artists fromthe African Diaspora are heavily influ-enced by the traumatic effects of post-colonial oppression, many are drawingfrom a different more glorious past....”

For Karen Seneferu, “Claiming beautyor resurrecting beauty against a history ofdemoralizing constructions resists death,

so, I create work that is both beautifulthus dangerous.”

Kara Fortune explains, “I attempt topeel back the skins and layers of historyand expose things that have been forgot-ten. Artists such as Charles White andJohn Outerbridge inspired me to createmy own visual concepts.”

Oakland artist Leon Kennedy was pro-filed in “The Visionary Folk Art of LeonKennedy,” in the April 2014 Street Spirit.

Kennedy wrote: “There is a need forwhat I am doing, a need for the truth and aneed for people to be inspired. The worldis filled with despair and people needsome light. They need to know all thepossibilities. That’s what my art is about.”

Trevor Parham and Unity Lewis alsohave works in the show. Parham writes,“We need to connect, We need to share.We need to build. We need to be artists sothat we can be ourselves again.”

Lewis explains, “One of my objectivesis to preserve the cultural traditions of myancestors that have been passed down tome through art. At the same time I amadding my own unique insight.”

Parham describes the plans for thefuture. “In the same spirit as we wereputting this exhibit together, we realizedthat, for whatever reason, many of theartists that we had relationships to weremen.” So with Black History month beingfollowed by National Women’s Historymonth, he promises that “in March we’regoing to reconfigure the entire exhibitfocused on Black women artists.”

Oakstop Gallery Displays “Black Artists on Art”

Trevor Parham, the director of Oakstop Gallery in Oakland. Lydia Gans photo

Leon Kennedy’s painting, “The Three Wise Men,” is on display at Oakstop Gallery.

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King’s “BeyondVietnam” speech given on April 4, 1967

At 7:00 a.m. on Good Friday, April 3, people concerned about the continu-ing development of nuclear weapons will gather at the corner of VascoRoad and Patterson Pass Road, outside Livermore Laboratory, for aninterfaith prayer service followed by nonviolent acts of witness.

Our preacher will be Quaker David Hartsough, who met Dr. King during theMontgomery bus boycott in 1956 and who has been active in civil rights and theanti-nuclear movement since then.

From the corner we will walk to the gates of the Lab, pausing along the way toobserve the Stations of the Cross where we will mourn the deaths of the people ofcolor in our communities who have been killed by police and “security” forces.Some will block the gates, risking arrest.

A gathering of the community to share our work will follow at a nearby church. Light refreshments will be served.

The event is wheelchair accessible. Principal organizers are Ecumenical PeaceInstitute and Livermore Conversion Project. For more information visit www.epi-calc.org or call 510-990-0374

Beyond Nuclear Weapons, Beyond Empire, Beyond Racism

Methodist Bishop Leontine Kelly arrested at Livermore Laboratory protest.